


Bare Wood

by Dorinda



Category: Sinbad (TV)
Genre: Boats and Ships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-24
Updated: 2014-12-24
Packaged: 2018-03-03 03:43:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2836826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorinda/pseuds/Dorinda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the rest of the crew is away, that's the time for Gunnar to tend to the ship. He doesn't expect to be tended to himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bare Wood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Keiko Kirin (sakana17)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sakana17/gifts).



> A treat for you... Happy Yuletide!

It was a good, safe port, in a city with trade routes and well-stocked markets. Cook had sent everyone else ashore with long lists of stores and supplies, as well as last-minute orders given at the top of his lungs.

Most things Cook did, he did at the top of his lungs. Gunnar thought it seemed to work well on the others. Maybe it reminded them of their homes or their parents, those who had them. Maybe they felt safest being shouted at and cuffed harmlessly about the head, then fed heaping bowls of al-sikbaj before being shooed out from underfoot.

As for Gunnar, this time he stayed behind. They had money enough to hire a donkey cart, so they wouldn't need him to carry the biggest sacks or the heaviest crates. Anwar and Rina had been tugging the money bag back and forth between them, arguing over whether to pay an honest price or get the pay-and-pickpocket discount. Nala had been trying to get a word in, reminding them that she was not about to try escaping a mob of angry shopkeepers in the back of a donkey cart, thank you. Sinbad, of course, had been running ahead, laughing, calling them to hurry.

It was quiet here without them.

He spent some time inspecting the spars and ropes, and clearing the deck. It needed a little tidying; the others did a good job with the Providence, as far as was in them, but they were no sailors. 

The ship was riding high at her moorings, he noticed. Low on stores, low on crew. A good time to tend to her hull. Or as far as he could reach, at least. He rigged a rope-sling from the bow, stripped to his drawers, and climbed down with brush and stone to scrape at weed and barnacles.

The work was soothing. The sun baked his shoulders and back while he dabbled his feet in the cool water, and the layers of scurf fell away under his rhythmic scrubbing. It was good to have a simple task, one that had a clear solution and answered to his hands: from rough weed to clean wood, over and over and over.

"Gangway, gangway, sorry, watch it, heads up— _look out_!" A blurry brown and white form swathed in burlap dashed along the wharf, leaping over dogs and kneeling dockworkers and bales of fleece or fabric or hides. At the last, it gave a great running series of hops over an unexpected string of goats being led along the waterside, feet flashing between and among beasts and ropes, barely missing a bad fall and a tangle.

"Ha!" the figure cried, springing over the last goat to land precariously at the bare edge of the wharf. He wobbled on his toes, his arms pinwheeling, and then settled back safely on his heels again--because of course it was he, it was Sinbad. His teeth showed white in the sun as he laughed and panted; his body was draped in sacks and pouches.

"Gunnar!" he cried, catching sight of the sling and the brush and stone. "What are you doing? Is it a punishment?"

"I am punishing the barnacles," Gunnar said solemnly, which made Sinbad laugh again. 

"Well, I suppose they weren't invited." Sinbad eased his back under the many bags and straps, still looking at him. 

Gunnar suddenly felt trapped in his ropes, hanging like a fly in a spider's web. Without replying he climbed up, slipping over the rail to land on the deck, leaving a line of bare wet footprints across it.

Only then did Sinbad scramble up the gangplank. "Here." He pulled at a few knots, and sacks fell all around him with soft thuds. "I brought the spices. Herbs, too, and some of them fresh."

Gunnar set aside his tools and wiped his hands. "All from the list?" 

"Well." Sinbad finished pulling the last pouches over his head and knelt down with them, busying himself lining them up. 

"Mostly from the list."

"Well..."

Gunnar knelt too in the middle of their riches. He picked up one of the smallest bags and held it to his nose. The scent was nearly overpowering, sweet and dizzying and bold. 

Sinbad smiled at him. "Lists are overrated anyway."

"Hmm." Gunnar set the little bag back down. "Cook may not think so."

"He'll love these," Sinbad insisted. "He'll know exactly what to do with them. It'll be like a festival day every day."

He leaned in to catch up the little bag and brandish it, and in the air of his movement Gunnar could smell a heady mixture of every herb and grain and root he'd worn on his body during his pell-mell run back to the ship.

"Are they stolen?" Gunnar asked suddenly. He started to get up; if they'd be fleeing, he'd best ready the sails.

"No!" Sinbad was all wounded innocence. "I paid good money for these."

Gunnar considered. "Good money the others handed you to buy things on the list."

Sinbad leaned back on his hands. "The spice market smelled so good, though."

"They'll be back eventually, you know," Gunnar said, but he settled down next to Sinbad again. 

"I know." Sinbad sighed. "And they'll have a good long time with the hired donkey. I'm sure Rina has plenty of plans for me and the donkey-dung."

"I can't help you there."

"Course not!" Sinbad leaned and bumped him with one shoulder. "Not your job to save me from the terror that is Rina. I guess I'll just have to talk her out of it."

Gunnar nodded, unconvinced.

"Looks like you have enough to do as it is," Sinbad continued. "Why would a ship even need cleaning? It's washed with water all day."

"The water is full of life," Gunnar said. "Basra's on the sea, surely you know it."

Sinbad hugged his knees and did a bad job of looking calm, as he often did when he thought of Basra. "I was a city boy."

Gunnar wished he hadn't mentioned it. Everyone deserved the chance to forget.

"You looked quite at home," Sinbad said after a while, his irrepressible smile dawning again. "You were a merchant when we met, how'd you come to know boats so well?"

"My father was a waterman before me." Gunnar liked watching the cares fade from Sinbad's face. He was too young to feel so heavy. "He taught me many things. He even apprenticed me to the boatsmith for a time, when I was still just a boy."

"So you can make them as well as sail them," Sinbad said.

"No, no." Gunnar's wet feet and legs had dried, and the sun felt hotter now against the back of his neck. "Not now. Even then, as a little boy, I was just an apprentice. Lash and chop. Hoist and carry."

"Is that where you got this?" Sinbad's eyes moved in a gesture Gunnar didn't follow.

"Got what?"

"This," Sinbad said, and he laid one hand on the biggest muscle of Gunnar's right arm. His hand was cool and dark against Gunnar's bare, sunburned skin. 

Gunnar looked at him and could not at once speak. He moved his tongue in his mouth at last and said, "No. I..."

_Before his full growth, even, determined as a bull, he fought the other youths in training for the Valsgarde. They wrestled and sparred, they ran with the yoke-and-stones over their shoulders._

_Sent to the ambush, the corps ran in full kit, armored in a jarl's treasure, sprinting up a forest hill as if the metal were lighter than flax._

_He swung a sword round him, the long blade a comfortable extension of his arm. Forward, and kill. Backhand, and kill. Kill the warriors. Kill the old men in their patched war-gear. Kill the house-women shouting defiance. Kill the little ones with their toy shields. As ordered, open to the madness and kill, and the muscle so accustomed never tires._

"Gunnar?"

"This," he managed at last. He opened his hands, looked at them. _This body was built in blood._ "It was later." There was a splinter in the callus of one palm. He dug for it with his fingers.

"Well," said Sinbad, "I appreciate it, wherever it came from. Here, give that to me." He let go of Gunnar's arm and took his hand, unhesitating. He examined the splinter closely, pressing Gunnar's palm with fingertip and thumb. "I mean…your strength has already saved my life, what, a dozen times?"

Gunnar shrugged.

"Don't do that, I almost had it." Sinbad flexed his fingers and tried again. Gunnar felt the thin edge of a fingernail pushing hard until it almost hurt. "I'm just saying, wherever you came from, it was my good fortune."

He glanced up at Gunnar's face when Gunnar wasn't expecting it. His dark eyes softened. "My good fortune," he insisted. "And I haven't had much of that. What with one thing and another."

Without looking back down, Sinbad gripped Gunnar's hand tighter for a moment. There was a brief, shivering pain, and then the splinter was out, held triumphantly high. "Got it!"

Gunnar flexed his hand. A single bead of blood shone bright on his palm, easily wiped away.

"Thank you," he said. He nerved himself, and took a careful hold of Sinbad's wrist. "Thank you."

Sinbad smiled, but it was a gentle, secret smile, not his usual bright defiance to all the darknesses of the world.

"Next time," he said, "let them go themselves, if the list is so important. And I'll stay here. With you."

His touch was cool, like the seawater, like the wind. His hands eased the burn of the sun on Gunnar's skin. And his eyes, soft and brave, answered the burn in the depths of Gunnar's heart.

Gunnar looked down. Looked up. And smiled.

"You would be welcome," he said.

  


**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to M, for the beta!


End file.
